Optical clock recovery is needed e.g. to synchronize receivers with transmitters in optical communication systems, especially in all-optical systems having modulation frequencies in the order of 10 GHz or above.
The article “Optical Tank Circuits Used for All-Optical Timing Recovery”, by M. Jinno and T. Matsumoto, IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics Vol. 28, No. 4 Apr. 1992, pp. 895-900, discloses a method for optical clock recovery. An optical clock signal synchronized to an incoming data stream is generated by extracting line spectral components in the incoming data stream using an optical resonator whose free spectral range is equal to the incoming data bit rate.